Richard Vernon – författare

First published in 1986. Nations have a unity often described as ''cultural''; and within them there are divergences some of which are termed ''political''. But culture and politics do not, therefore, comprise two wholly distinct zones or orders of experience, the one marked by unity, the other by plurality. Unity and plurality interpenetrate.

These insights, which derive from the thinking of Herder, have been fundamental to the work of F. M. Barnard. In this volume a number of scholars contribute, in Barnardian vein, reflections on the tensions between unity and plurality in the history of ideas. The central underlying question is, in essence, ’what is the context of political life?’ The question remains of more importance than any single answer.

First published in 1986. Nations have a unity often described as ''cultural''; and within them there are divergences some of which are termed ''political''. But culture and politics do not, therefore, comprise two wholly distinct zones or orders of experience, the one marked by unity, the other by plurality. Unity and plurality interpenetrate.

These insights, which derive from the thinking of Herder, have been fundamental to the work of F. M. Barnard. In this volume a number of scholars contribute, in Barnardian vein, reflections on the tensions between unity and plurality in the history of ideas. The central underlying question is, in essence, ’what is the context of political life?’ The question remains of more importance than any single answer.

Ideas of justice have traditionally focused on what individuals owe to one another and have drawn our attention to what is considered fair – what one of us owes to another is justly matched by what the other owes to them. However, what does justice require us to do for past and future generations?

In Justice Back and Forth, award-winning author Richard Vernon explores the possibility of justice in cases where time makes reciprocity impossible. This “temporal justice” is examined in ten controversial cases including the duty to return historical artifacts, the ethics and politics of parenting, the punishment of historical offences, the right to procreate, and the imposition of constitutions on future citizens. By deftly weaving together discussions on historical redress and justice for future generations, Vernon reveals that these two opposing topics can in fact be used to illuminate each other. In doing so, he concludes that reciprocity can be adapted to serve intergenerational cases.

Ideas of justice have traditionally focused on what individuals owe to one another and have drawn our attention to what is considered fair – what one of us owes to another is justly matched by what the other owes to them. However, what does justice require us to do for past and future generations?

In Justice Back and Forth, award-winning author Richard Vernon explores the possibility of justice in cases where time makes reciprocity impossible. This “temporal justice” is examined in ten controversial cases including the duty to return historical artifacts, the ethics and politics of parenting, the punishment of historical offences, the right to procreate, and the imposition of constitutions on future citizens. By deftly weaving together discussions on historical redress and justice for future generations, Vernon reveals that these two opposing topics can in fact be used to illuminate each other. In doing so, he concludes that reciprocity can be adapted to serve intergenerational cases.

The citizen, a figure capable of self-government is both the political and the personal sense, is a central and enduring theme of political thought. The role of the citizen in the modern state was question raised persistently by French political theorists from Rousseau on, as they sought new principles of legitimacy to replace those of the ancient regime. Richard Vernon’s studies in this volume examine a series of moments in French political thought when the possibility and meaning of citizenship were called into question.

Vernon considers the view held by Rousseau and later Durkheim that citizenship was sustained immediately by moral principles, a view that was criticized by others who refused any such identification of political and moral order. Vernon shows how this refusal governs, in different ways, the political thinking of theorists as diverse as Maistre, Proudhon, Tocqueville, Comte, Sorel, and Bergson. He explains why the idea of citizenship in its political sense was exposed to so many objections, objections that may in turn suggest a new approach to the topic of political legitimacy.

Citizenship may once have been legitimated by ideas of moral, religious or cosmic order, but in a modern context it is the civic process itself that must exercise a legitimating function. Once, citizenship rested upon order; now, suggests Vernon, we may have to realize that order depends upon citizen.

This analysis of Georges Sorel''s ideas on revolution and the original translations of some of his little-known writings on this theme offer a critical reassessment of Sorel''s place in modern political thought.

By turns conservative pessimist, social democrat, revolutionary syndicalist, and reactionary, Sorel is a perplexing figure. He has long been regarded as one of a generation of intellectuals who abandoned reason for violence, theoretical reflection for practical commitment. But according to Sorel -- as the title of his most notorious book makes clear -- the task of the theoretician is to reflect on violence. He maintained that reflection discloses the limited and deficient character of practical thought, but he also recognized that the springs of action escape the grasp of the reflective theorist. It was this distinctness of theory and practice that Soreal attempted to come to terms with in his thinking on revolution. If revolution is a violent action, it is also a process of structural change which the actors themselves do not comprehend. This theme enables the reader to grasp a significant degree of continuity among some of Sorel''s bewilderingly diverse positions. Moreover, it accounts for much of his critique of Marxism and his sceptical reflects on Marxian notions of history, class, consciousness, and party.

Placed in the context of modern revolutionary thinking, Sorel is an eccentric figure but not an irrelevant one, for his approach points to some of the difficulties in the idea of revolution that were largely overlooked by the ''New Left.''